Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
14. Naples, Sorrento and Capri
I checked out of my hotel and walked to Roma-Termini. It was, in the way of most public places in Italy,
a madhouse. At every ticket window customers were gesturing wildly. They didn't seem so much to be
buying tickets as pouring out their troubles to the monumentally indifferent and weary-looking men seated
behind each window. It is amazing how much emotion the Italians invest in even the simplest transactions.
I had to wait in line for forty minutes while a series of people ahead of me tore their hair and bellowed
and eventually were issued with a ticket and came away looking suddenly happy. I couldn't guess what their
problems were, and in any case I was too busy fending off the many people who tried to cut in front of me,
as if I were holding a door open for them. One of them tried twice. You need a pickaxe to keep your place in
a Roman queue.
Finally, with only a minute to spare before my train left, my turn came. I bought a second-class single to
Naples - it was easy; I don't know what all the fuss was about - then raced around the corner to the platform
and did something I've always longed to do: I jumped onto a moving train - or, to be slightly more precise,
fell into it, like a mailbag tossed from the platform.
The train was crowded, but I found a seat by a window and caught my breath and mopped up the blood
trickling down my shins as we lumbered slowly out through the endless tower-block suburbs of Rome,
picked up speed and moved on to a dusty, hazy countryside full of half-finished houses and small apartment
buildings with no sign of work in progress. It was a two-and-a-half-hour journey to Naples and everyone on
the train, without apparent exception, passed the time by sleeping, stirring to wakefulness only to note the
location when we stopped at some drowsing station or to show a ticket to the conductor when he passed
through. Most of the passengers looked poor and unshaven (even several of the women), which was a
notable contrast after the worldly elegance of Rome. These, I supposed, were mostly Neapolitan labourers
who had come to Rome for the work and were now heading home to see their families.
I watched the scenery - a low plain leading to mountains of the palest green and dotted with occasional
lifeless villages, all bearing yet more unfinished houses - and passed the time dreamily embroidering my
Ornella Muti fantasy, which had now grown to include a large transparent beach ball, two unicycles, a
trampoline and the massed voices of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The air in the carriage was warm and
still and before long I fell into a doze myself, but was startled awake after a few minutes by a baleful wailing.
A gypsy woman, overweight and in a headscarf, was passing along the carriage with a filthy baby, loudly
orating the tale of her troubled life and asking for money, but no one gave her any. She pushed the baby in
my face - he was covered in chocolaty drool and so startlingly ugly that it was all I could do to keep from
going 'Aiieee!' and throwing my hands in front of my face - and I gave her a thousand lire as fast as I could
drag it out of my pocket before Junior loosed a string of gooey brown dribble onto me. She took the money
with the indifference of a conductor checking a ticket and without thanks proceeded on through the train
shouting her troubles anew. The rest of the journey passed without incident.
At Naples, I emerged from the train and was greeted by twenty-seven taxi-drivers, all wanting to take
me someplace nice and probably distant, but I waved them away and transferred myself by foot from the
squalor of the central station to the squalor of the nearby Circumvesuviana station, passing through an
uninterrupted stretch of squalor en route. All along the sidewalks people sat at wobbly tables selling packets
of cigarettes and cheap novelties. All the cars parked along the street were dirty and battered. All the stores
looked gloomy and dusty and their windows were full of items whose packaging had faded, sometimes
almost to invisibility, in the brilliant sunshine. My plan had been to stop in Naples for a day or two before
going on to Sorrento and Capri, but this was so awful that I decided to press on at once and come back to
Naples when I thought I might be able to face it better.
It was getting on for rush hour by the time I got to Circumvesuviana and bought a ticket. The train was
packed with sweating people and very slow. I sat between two fat women, all wobbling flesh, who talked
across me the whole time, making it all but impossible for me to follow my book or do any useful work on my
Ornella Muti fantasy, but I considered myself lucky to have a place to sit, even if it was only six inches wide,
and the women were marvellously soft, it must be said. I spent most of the journey with my head on one or
